Shit Poetry

A glass of water on the nightstand,
holding a set of teeth like a pale, sunken ship.
They float in a slow, circular drift,
catching the blue light of a nearby pharmacy sign.

A smear of cherry lipstick on the rim,
tasting of cheap wine and a decade of lies.
They bob there, mindless and white,
dreaming of a steak they will never chew.

It is the most honest thing in the room,
waiting for the morning
to be shoved back into a mouth of gums
and a lingering scent of mothballs.

A gold-plated ring of cheap plastic
wedged between a flattened Marlboro
and a piece of grey, salted gum.
It catches a sliver of neon light
like a holy relic in a gutter.

The rain peels the glitter away,
leaving a jagged, yellow tooth
that tastes of iron and diesel.
I want to wear it to the funeral,
just to see who notices the shine.

The blades are coated in a grey, felted fur,
a thick skin of dead cells and city soot.
It rattles like a skeleton in a washing machine,
pushing the scent of hot copper into my eyes.

I remember you in that yellow dress,
the fan blowing your hair into a frantic web.
Now it just shudders in the corner of the room,
whirring a hymn for things that refuse to stop shaking.

A fly landed on the grill and stayed,
frozen in a state of electric shock,
looking like a tiny, charred prayer
offered to a god of lukewarm air.

It screams with the voice of a dying plane,
blowing lukewarm air that smells of ozone
and the panic of a thousand wet palms.

I hold my fingers to the nozzle,
watching a single bead of water
shiver and vanish into the void.

It is a loud, electric prayer
for skin that never quite dries,
leaving me damp and humming
like a fluorescent light in a dead mall.

The grease trap is a heavy, black lung
breathing the scent of a thousand fried mistakes.
It holds the sludge of old lard
and the glitter of a dropped wedding ring.

A colony of pale worms
dances in the iridescent film,
moving with the grace of a dying ballet
under a flickering fluorescent tube.

I stare into the oil
and see my own face,
blurred and yellow,
like a photograph left in the rain.

The foam has swollen with November rain,
a heavy, grey sponge smelling of wet dog
and the ghosts of a thousand bad decisions.
A single copper coin is fused to the fabric,
green as a bruised plum.

A cigarette butt is buried in the seam,
a small, white bone in a velvet grave.
The sky is the color of wet concrete,
and a pigeon lands on the armrest
with an eye like a rusted bead.

I sink for a moment into the cold,
tasting the metallic tang of the wind.
It feels like a hug from a dead relative
who only ever lied about their salary.

The carton bloats like a drowned lung,
shivering in the back of the fridge
beside a jar of pickled eggs and a dead lime.

It smells of a wet basement in 1994,
a thick, sour cloud that tastes of iron
and the way you looked when you left.

I pour it out, and it lands in the sink
like a heavy, white curd,
a slow-motion landslide of forgotten calcium.

The dryer spins a single red sock
into a frantic, nylon whirlpool.
It smells of industrial lemon
and a divorce that took too long.

I lean my forehead against the glass,
feeling the vibration of a thousand
lost buttons and linty dreams,
hoping the cycle ends in silence.

The dryer hums a hymn for the lost,
swallowing one red sock
and the copper taste of a winter cough.
The air is thick with the ghost of lavender
and the smell of a wet dog in a raincoat.

A stranger peels a hard-boiled egg
over a mountain of damp towels,
his knuckles white as bleached linen.
He has the patience of a dead fish
while the machine shakes like a shivering addict.

I found a button from a coat I never owned,
black as a blind eye,
nestled in the grey fur of the lint trap.

The bristles are splayed like a panic attack,
caked in a lime-scale crust
from a faucet that screams in the night.

It lives in a ceramic cup
beside a half-eaten peach
and a pill for the shaking.

A plastic monument to a mouth
that forgot how to taste the salt.